One of the big entrepreneurial concepts is following the money. If you haven’t figured out how to get paid or you’re not chasing the pipeline that is actually paying you, you’re doing it all wrong.
As you know, our current most lucrative side hustle is selling shirts. When we realized the potential of selling shirts, we had to hit it hard (getting 1500 listings on Amazon takes real work!).
Merch by Amazon is a t-shirt designing platform. It allows you to get your own designs in front of literally BILLIONS of Amazon shoppers. You simply design, upload, and then get a few bucks every time a shirt sells (you pick your own royalty per shirt. Amazon charges around $12-$15 depending on shirt style and your set price. Anything after that, you get to keep). There’s no shipping or customer service to take care of, Amazon simply prints and ships your designs.
Merch by Amazon is free to join (do it today! – maybe when you get accepted in a year you’ll want to!). The catch here is that you have to wait for approval. The time until approval is completely arbitrary. There are reports of people waiting between 4-13 months to get an invite. Also, sometimes they don’t even send you an email and your account is approved and then terminated for inactivity before you even know what happened. To combat this, just try to log in on the Merch website about once a month. If you can get in and see a dashboard, you’ve been approved. You now have 120 days to upload your first design.
Is your job terrible? Do you feel undervalued or stressed out or overworked? How much do you depend on that income? How badly do you want out? Here’s how to quit your job (and how that might actually make your job better).
BACKGROUND: I was hired nearly seven years ago by a behavioral economics company to be a contractor. I was hired to do research for the company and help write white papers when needed. Back in those days, the company had less than 30 employees. Today, the company is much larger. It has 3 offices and over 200 employees. My boss is awesome and has always been an advocate for my work and my flexibility (and gave me a 33% raise just over a year ago). The company, however, has had some growing pains. For the past 6 months, they’ve been adding hierarchy where there hasn’t been any.
Over the past six months, with the restructuring, several things have happened. Several people around the office have decided I’m under them in the hierarchy and have either decided to ignore my work or not consult with me in the first place. With changes in H.R., my paycheck was forgotten for three pay periods in a row! Then, in December, someone in the office accused me of dishonest business practices via email (and then failed to apologize or even respond when I responded with proof against the accusations). Needless to say, the past six months haven’t been great for work.
A business can do everything right, but if they have poor business communication, they’ll never succeed. You are your business. You need to make sure you have the ability to communicate your goals and priorities to yourself, your partner and to others that that are involved in your bottom line.
If you’ve read enough about how to become rich, you’ve probably encountered two concepts:
Let me start by stating that I agree that the Pareto Principle is real and outsourcing can be useful in some regards. Let me also state that I agree that while frugality has limits, income potential does not. I agree that everyone is capable of earning more and the amount is potentially limitless.
In the personal finance world, we like to discuss asset allocation and rebalancing our funds. Where will you put your money? How much will be in stocks or bonds? Will you choose an index fund or buy individual stocks? With the stock market plummet of the past week and people freaking out, I thought about how we undervalue ourselves while we focus so much on money. If we were to manage our lives like we manage our assets, we would ask ourselves similar questions. Let’s explore the possible life allocations:
After looking the research about regret and the biggest life regrets, I thought we covered it. (“WHAT?! More regret? Get over it Maggie!”) But then I came across an article published in 2012 the Harvard Business Review blog network about the top five career regrets. Since we’re still mid-career and this is still primarily a personal finance blog, I had to talk about it. (Last in the series of regret, I promise.) So, what do 30 professionals say are their biggest career regrets? I’ll tell you (along with additions as to how I think Mr. T and are doing on these potential regrets):
My grandfather passed away last week. By the end, he was pretty angry to still be alive, so it was an expected, good change for him, but sad for the rest of us. I flew down to Portland this past weekend for the funeral.
My grandpa owned a printing store he had started with a partner of his in 1961. His obituary said “He retired 15 years ago” which simply means that at 72, he sold the company to his son. He still went to the office every single day until his mid-eighties and managed the payroll long after he “retired.”
I interviewed him once when I was in high school about how he picked his job. “Well, I was walking down the street on my own one day and I got hungry, and I walked into the first place I saw. And I’m still in the printing business. No one decided what they wanted to be, they just did what they could to get money.” (How’s that for a great financial phrase?)
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